Battle of Fort Francisco de las Carolinas

The Battle of Fort Francisco de las Carolinas (17 September 1583) was a battle fought during the Anglo-Spanish War. The Royal Navy captain John Whitesmith attempted to capture Fort Francisco de las Carolinas (present-day Charlestown, South Carolina) from the Spanish garrison to threaten the Spanish treasure fleet as it left Florida. However, the English fleet was wrecked by strong winds and cannon fire from Fort Francisco, and those who landed were abandoned and lost.

Background
Governor Lorenzo Suarez de Mendoza founded Fort Francisco de las Carolinas in 1580 with the goal of defending passing Spanish galleons from Mexico, Cuba, and Florida, and he positioned a sizeable garrison in the fort. The fort guarded a harbor beneath it, as well as a small settlement. The garrison of 1,200 troops, commanded by Fernando Gonzales y Loyola, also had a force of 3 ships that guarded the fort from the sea. Fort Francisco's cannons alone were the equivalent of a man-of-war, and held off many privateering attacks in the 1570s.

In 1582, English admiral John Whitesmith planned out an attack on the Spanish fort in order to bolster the money gained by looting; any Spanish ship that passed the harbor could be disabled by cannons and boarded. Queen Elizabeth I of England gave permission for Whitesmith's expedition, giving him 5 ships and 700 troops. Whitesmith named the largest capital ship, a frigate, "Queen Elizabeth" in her honor.

The plan was for the English ships to enter the harbor at evening, when the watch was changing, and some sailors would board the Spanish ships in the harbor and capture them. Taking advantage of their large fleet, the English would bombard the fort as a landing party captured the fort from the Spanish. When the Spanish flag was lowered, Whitesmith would disembark with his guards and oversee the loading of prisoners and loot onto his ships.

Battle
The plan went horribly wrong when a wind storm began in the dawn of 17 September 1583 while the English ships passed Cape Hatteras in North Carolina. They suffered 23 dead in the crashes, and their cargo ship "Keylung" was damaged so badly that they could not drag her with the rest of the fleet. They attempted to attach mooring lines to her hull and drag her into the ocean, but it capsized and the crew was forced to join the "Queen Elizabeth".

The English also had no supply base that they could gather provisions at, and they were forced to attack the Spanish settlement of Nueva Chipas, a small campsite on the shore. They looted what they could before continuing on their mission. By the evening of 17 September, they had encountered thick fog as they entered the harbor of Fort Francisco, obscuring the Spanish ships from sight.

When Whitesmith's ships entered the harbor, they were unaware of what time it was. The guard was scheduled to change at exactly 6:00 PM, but they arrived early at 5:39 PM. At that point, the Spanish sentries had already fortified their positions, but they could not notice anything in the harbor. The English ships attempted to beach, but one of them struck Spanish brig "San Gervasio" and the English crew attempted to board the Spanish ship. The sound of musket fire and swords clanking alerted the Spanish in the fort, and the Spanish fort opened fire with their cannons. "San Sebastiano", a hulking Spanish frigate, encountered the English frigate "Queen Elizabeth", preventing the English from landing their forces on the shore. Whitesmith was wounded by a musket shot, and the Spanish captured his ship.

Meanwhile, the English ships "Saint George", "Liverpool", and "Adventure" were able to land at the beaches, and they disembarked their crews on the shoreline. The Spanish garrison of the fort fired on them, and without any cover except for the woods (where they would not be able to shoot accurately) and some rocks, the English were picked off. The landing party commander, Jonathan Mayor, planned to retreat to the ships, only to find that they had fled for the sake of their own survival. Mayor was forced to surrender the surviving members of the landing party to the Spanish, and the English fleet fled. Only one of them made it to the English colony of New Leicester in present-day Ghana. The others were either captured or had run aground in the Azores while heading for Liverpool.

Aftermath
The expedition was a disaster for the English, who lost almost their whole force. However, battles between the Spanish and the Native Americans caused the Spanish people to retreat to Florida, Cuba, Mexico, and Central and South America.